Dollhouse: The Happy Ending
by fiona249
Summary: Joss Whedon is the king of sad endings, and I'm kind of messing with his meaningful sadness to create my own happy. Echo and Paul get the ending I wanted them to have: a happy one.


"This is extremely weird," Echo said. She slapped a hand to the side of her face in frustration. "Seriously."

Adelle DeWitt did not even look up from her paperwork. Frankly, Echo suspected she was the only one who either wrote or read her precious paperwork. It seemed to afford her comfort in the present chaos. "Then you shouldn't have put him in your head in the first place, should you?"

"_Paul_. It's _Paul_. How could I not?" Echo tried to smile. "I dream about him, and us, and that's good. But he's not me, and it's starting to get strange to have him literally as part of me."

"Well done," Adelle said absently. "Do you think we can fit more beds into the spa room?"

"No," Echo was well accustomed to Adelle's sudden subject changes by now. The former mistress of the Dollhouse had a lot on her plate – more refugees flowed in every day as the re-wipes began. Fights were breaking out all over above ground. "Chiefly because we don't _have_ any more beds, you know that. I'm just grateful that so far none of the people in here seem to be trying to re-establish the old world order." She grimaced. "The other day when I was scoping the surface a middle-aged woman tried to put her personality in me. The whole life-everlasting thing."

Adelle suddenly refocused. "Did she have any important information about Rossum?"

Echo sighed. "A bottom feeder who stole some tech. She had nothing." She grinned viciously. "However, I did take out three of Rossum's employees who chose to stay in their own bodies and because of that survived the wipe recently, that's worth a bit of happy."

"None of it matters if you don't get the technology," Adelle replied crisply. "We know there's at least three major wiping-machines."

"I know, Addy, chill," Echo drawled, lapsing into Caroline's personality a bit. Then she winced – what she'd said had brought up Caroline's memories of Benny, which hurt for both of them. "I'll get them. I'm _working_ on it. But one's in China -"

"Oh good," Adelle said dryly. She sat down at her desk and crossed her legs. The strain in her face and the smoke-darkened patches of skin made her pose a parody of ten years ago. "You've narrowed it down to a continent, at least. How long are you staying?"

"Oh, Echo, it's wonderful to see you," Echo said in a monotone. "You have been missed. It's been a month, I was so worried."

"I assumed that was a given. How long are you staying?" Adelle demanded. She stood up again and poured herself some tea. "This place has had no space at all since people first started finding it. There's no space for you. There's no space for me, either, but I have to be here."

"Our glorious leader," Echo remarked ironically. She paused. "How are the Actives going?"

"Don't call them that," Adelle snapped, but then softened a little. "Badly. We can't _find_ their personalities. Of course, we have no decent scientists, so that's hardly surprising. But they _should_ have come back when Topher -" Adelle paused and regrouped. It hurt to think about Topher. "I mean, they should still have personalities. Most people do, it's just about one percent who seem to have lost themselves. It looks like Ballard was wrong -" she cut herself off again. "Never mind."

"Wrong when he said you can't erase someone's soul," Echo completed. "It doesn't hurt me, really. He's right here, in me. I can't think of him as dead."

"Well, you should," Adelle was brusque. "Anything else is a lie. I'm not talking spiritual, here. He can't hold you, kiss you, wrap his arms about you. Ballard is dead. We should find someone else to be your back-up -"

"No," Echo was equally as stubborn. "I don't need back-up. I mean, he was good back-up -" for a second Echo's voice wavered, and she coughed to cover it up. "Great back-up. But now I have to be subtle and a macho-man with a gun isn't subtle." She accessed the secret agent inside her. "It would complicate and possibly endanger any missions."

"Right," Adelle said doubtfully. She studied the woman before her. "Would you like some more tea?"

* * *

_It was night-time but she couldn't sleep. It was strange, not having the pod around her – and equally strange realising that she'd grown used to sleeping in a pod. She was in a dark alley in LA, hiding with Paul. He would be on guard – she should take over from him. The butchers could attack at any time and the sentry needed to be alert._

_But… wait… now she was in a bed. A room. And there was a single bed beside her and Paul was asleep in it. She stood up quietly and walked to stand near the head of his bed. The clothes he had been wearing when they'd wrestled earlier were on the floor, a lapse in his normal tidiness. It warmed her. "I love you," she said out loud. "It's not the Dollhouse." As she reached over to stroke his hair Paul opened his eyes._

_They were in a car. It didn't run, of course, but neither of them cared. Suicide mission tomorrow and like usual Echo could suddenly find it in herself to show him some of her. In this case, her body. He leaned in and kissed her hard until she was panting. But she had to be quiet. What if they heard?_

Echo woke with a gasp, covered in sweat. "Paul," she breathed. The two other people sharing her pod were still fast asleep – children, refugees, for them any kind of softness was heaven. Echo managed to extricate herself from the pod without waking them and leave the room. She wished she could talk to Priya but knew her friend would be either asleep or busy with Tony and T.

Still, she could talk to Paul. Echo found a quiet corner and closed her eyes. Suddenly she could see Paul, tall and strong. "Hey," she spoke to him in her mind. But like always it started to fade – whenever she tried to converse with her imprints, eventually it was just like accessing them. And she had talked to Paul so many times she barely had a second now before she became him.

"Echo?" Paul said out loud, through her. "Echo?" When accessed, just like all the others, Paul didn't know he was just an imprint. If she just accessed his skills he remained aware, but she couldn't talk to him properly… and when she was in him, she could feel his fear for her and love for her. It was immense and powerful. In his mind it was ten years ago, Alpha wanted him dead and all Paul could do was worry that Alpha would go after Echo next. The one girl he truly loved.

With an effort, Echo threw off Paul's persona. "Paul," she said, her eyes opening against her will. He was gone – only a memory, a shadow, another set of cool combat skills she could borrow whenever she wanted to. A whisper in her mind, like the others. She could feel his love but she couldn't feel him.

Adelle was right. Paul was dead.

Echo cried.

* * *

"He's a handsome one," Echo conceded. The new dumbshow was exactly the kind of person who would have ended up in the dollhouse years ago – apart from a few scars on his arms, he was model-material.

"I know," Adelle DeWitt held his chin for a second, staring at him. "About your age, too."

Echo paused. "Addy, I know that voice. What are you doing?"

Adelle sighed, letting her hand drop. "Zone found a scientist, brought her back yesterday. It's Topher's old assistant. Do you recall her?"

"Ivy," Echo managed to remember. "I see. Do you think she can fix these people?"

"No," Adelle started to walk away from the young man, as if she'd forgotten he was even there. "She doubts they _can_ be fixed, actually. Ivy is rather… er… emotionally damaged, but she does seem to have somewhat peaked as a scientist."

"I see," Echo said slowly, beginning to understand.

Adelle looked down. "I… well, it's rather selfish of me. Ivy found Topher's chip. An old one, before he was so unstable."

"And you want to give him new life in the male model," Echo nodded.

"Good heavens, no!" Adelle DeWitt gave a restrained smile. "I daresay he would misuse such a body terribly. One of the other male bodies would be much better for him – I don't know I could stand having Topher as such a veritable piece of man-candy." Both stopped to laugh at the terribly British Adelle using such a term. "I was thinking that such a body would be rather perfect for Paul Ballard. He seems very well-muscled, very soldierly."

"Oh," Echo couldn't think of anything to say. Her head was filled with screaming – some of it hers, some not. "Paul wouldn't want that."

"To be an imprint? Of course he would hate that," Adelle said placidly. "And for Topher it would completely wreck all he did to save us – absolutely negate his heroic sacrifice. It's unlikely he'd get a hero's death twice. They would both be furious at us for even considering it."

They continued walking for some time in silence. Finally, as they reached the balcony, Echo spoke again. "We're still going to do it, aren't we?"

Adelle DeWitt leant her elbows against the railing, staring down at the huge crowd of moving, working and playing people. All of them their own people, brave and new. "As you Americans would say… damn right."

* * *

Echo watched the man sit up with a mixture of terror and hope. _Paul_, she thought. This was Paul. Oh, his skin was darker, he was a bit younger, his hair was longer, his eyes were a different colour… but it was Paul. All she'd ever wanted.

Topher – the new Topher – had insisted on being there. He was still confused, after all ten years had passed which he hadn't even been aware of. He clung to Ivy and Adelle as if they were all that was holding him up. Not that that was stopping him from bragging about how he had died to save them all.

Paul – the new Paul – blinked. He looked down at his hands, first, and Echo watched his face turn angry. Then he looked up and saw her and he just – lit up. Inside and out. For a man as stoic as Paul, he seemed highly emotional at seeing her – but then, he'd been in her head, so she knew just how much he felt for her. He was still there, in fact. Paul practically flew out of the chair and hugged her. "Echo… I was so worried… Alpha -" He started to say.

Echo kissed him to shut him up. He kissed exactly the same as the old Paul – well, he was the same person, after all. She knew that better than anyone. At some point she was going to have to explain that the apocalypse had happened, that millions of people had died, and that he was buddies with Alpha, and she honestly didn't know which revelation would horrify him most.

But for now there was just Echo's honest pleasure in the moment, kissing the man she'd loved for so long.

* * *

**I know this is very badly written, but the ending of Dollhouse made me cry. This is my quick-written attempt to make a happy ending, even though I realise Joss Whedon hates happy endings and it was very wrong of me to hope for one. Perhaps someday I'll rewrite this into some better form, but for now it's just this. This was written purely to make myself feel better and I just put it up in case anyone else was Jonesing for a Paul/Echo ending that didn't make puppies weep.**


End file.
